Website optimization is a key part of web development, SEO, and ongoing maintenance. However, website optimization is something that is often overlooked by webmasters. If you haven’t optimized your site or just intend to speed up the site, you should consider using these web optimization tips.

1. Choose a solid web host

Though the web hosting account doesn’t have a direct relationship with website optimization optimization, choosing the right web hosting account is essential. A solid web hosting account is the foundation of a site or blog. Its accessibility, security, server stability, customer supports and price all play a key role. It is for this reason that you must ensure that you are in good hands.

2. Host assets separately

Assets refer to web components such as static scripts and images that don’t need server-side processing. Some of these include images, web graphics, Cascading Style Sheets, javascripts and many others. Though it isn’t a must to host assets separately, there are tremendous results of doing so such as server stability and overall website optimization.

3. Minimize URL redirects

Webmasters tend to do URL redirects ( Meta redirects or Javascript) all the time. At times they intend to direct users from old pages to new ones or just guide users to the right page. Each redirect creates an additional round-trip-time (RTT) and HTTP request. When you have more redirections, users will take time to get to their destination time.

4. Customize header caching/expiry

When you use a customized expiry header, your web components such as static files, images, CSS and javascript will skip unnecessary HTTP request when a similar user reload a page for a second time. This will reduce the bandwidth required and thus help in a faster serving of the page.

5. Off-load assets

Off-loading refers to separating images, javascripts, static files and CSS from the main server to the place where the website is hosted and keeping them on another server or relying on other available web services. By this you will leave the server to the PHP processing. Some of the services to off load include images, web forms, javascripts, RSS, surveys and polls. If your blog is constantly requesting for assets, you should opt for paid hosting.

6. Handling web pages

Images play a key role in optimizing your company website. But if they aren’t properly optimized, they may end up being a burden and using unpredictably large bandwidth amounts. To optimize your image, avoid scaling them and instead practice inserting the right height and width. The good news is that you don’t have to be a SEO expert to optimize an image. There are various tools and web service that can help you do the job.

7. Handling CSS

Most modern websites have CSS as the foundation of their style, look and feel. CSS offers great flexibility to changes and is lesser in the number of codes required. But if badly coded, CSS could backfire. In order to optimize your CSS is properly, you should keep it short, use CSS Sprite and maintain your elements’ kids in line with the offspring. Every time a page is loaded, CSS sprite technique minimize HTTP request by combining several images in one image file and controlling its output with a CSS background-position attribute.

So whether you have an internal webmaster or have hired a web company to manage your site, consider these website optimization tips to better improve it's overall performance.